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There seems to be a lot of anecdotal evidence, at least on YouTube, that LiHV batteries degrade faster than LiPos. Is this true?

I own a couple whoops and only have 1s LiHV batteries since I can't find any decently priced non-LiHV 1s 300 mAh cells. My experience has been these LiHV batteries immediately begin to lose capacity and punch after only a few charge cycles. By 30 to 50 charge cycles the batteries are only good for about half a normal fight. What's all this I hear about people having multi-cell packs last a year or longer?

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    $\begingroup$ Quick follow up: I took a several month break from flying and recently took inventory of my 1S battery collection. Of the 24 same brand 300 mAh 1s LiHV cells I own, 11 completely self discharged from storage voltage and are unusable (cells are split evenly among two batches). Of the remaining 13, five of which have had at least 100 charge cycles and are from batch 1 of 2, are performing nearly identically the 8 good cells from batch 2 which have only a couple dozen cycles. I guess these 1S LiHV cells are cheap because they have high defect rates. So I just needed to weed out the bad ones. $\endgroup$
    – StevieRayBomb
    Commented Jul 18, 2020 at 15:51

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LiHV and LiPo batteries have different battery chemistry. If you were to charge a normal LiPo up to 4.35v per cell it would likely explode or at least puff up. The different battery chemistry in LiHV batteries allows the batteries to have a higher capacity to weight ratio. (For example, a 1500mah LiPo would be noticeably heavier than a 1500mah LiHV) A LiHV battery can hold more power and performance in a battery that weighs less.

This ability to pack more power into the battery does come at a cost though as it does reduce the longevity of the battery significantly. Any good quality standard Lipo should hold up to 300+ charge cycles (If taken care of properly) whereas a LiHV battery may begin to swell up at only 30-40 cycles.

LiHV batteries are very useful when it comes to serious racing though. The high performance and increased power per weight ratio give racers an advantage when racing, they will just need to replace batteries a lot more often.

It just depends on whether you want a little bit longer flight at the expense of needing to replace your batteries a lot more often.

You can read more about it here: https://oscarliang.com/lihv-lipo-drone-battery-hvli/

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I’m not 100% sure, but I’ve seen some people say that LiHV are just high grade LiPo.

So charging up to 4.35V per cell may not be good for the battery chemistry because they are still just LiPo under another name.

Like I say, I’m not certain, but it could be an explanation.

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